A roof over one’s head. A home. Other than food and water, nothing is more essential to human life and health. Conversely, save forced starvation, there’s no better way to eliminate a people than to reduce their homes to rubble. No one knows this better, or carried out the practice more ruthlessly and efficiently, than the State of Israel.

One day feels like a week in Hebron.The quickest way to get to this beautiful but conflicted West Bank town, from Jerusalem, is from West Jerusalem’s cavernous downtown bus station. Read and listen to the story here.

It’s a perfect storm: horrific, bone and tissue-pulverizing wounds from high velocity sniper rounds, a health care system crippled by over a decade-long military siege, and multi-drug resistant infections.

Tell a friend you’re traveling to the Marshall Islands, in the central Pacific. Paradise in mind, they may beg to come along. The Marshalls are certainly remarkable. Not just because they’re so beautiful, but because of what happened here.

Tourists come to Al-Walaja from around the world to enjoy the lovely surrounding landscape. A huge olive tree, reputedly over 5000 years-old, is a big draw. For political tourists, Israel’s imposing “security barrier,” soon to enclose little Al-Walaja in a cage, is a must-see.

When Michael rows his boat ashore in the old camp fire song, across a Jordan River chilly and wide, he discovers a land of milk and honey. The descendants of shepherds he might have greeted are now the victims of land confiscation, property destruction and assault.

As Donald Trump ponders whether or not to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem – endorsing Israel’s claim to the city as its “eternal, undivided capital” – Israel moves heaven and earth to cleanse East Jerusalem of its Palestinian residents.

Bacteria and fungi, Earth’s quintessential biochemists, are famous for the odd molecules they produce. But human beings are no slouches. According to one estimate, global commerce swells with thousands of industrial chemicals, many completely novel, some very toxic

Standing on the edge of little Battir, I feasted my eyes on an astonishing sight: an amphitheater of ancient stone terraces covered in a cornucopia of fruits, vegetables, herbs and trees — including olive trees over a thousand years old.

I took off for Hebron on a Sunday morning. Throngs of Israeli soldiers filled the bus station, soldiers on the move, barely more than teenagers, large backpacks and automatic weapons flung over their shoulders, smart phones in their hands.

Once it was clear the number of refugees arriving in Germany would top one million, reactions varied dramatically. Months later, a divided society is still debating its role as a refuge for the second time since the end of the cold war.

Last fall I rode 1500 miles from Taos, New Mexico to New Orleans on a 1983 Yamaha xs-650. It was my first solo, long distance bike trip and New Orleans — a legendary city — seemed like a good destination.

As the world holds its breath, waiting for Israel to demolish the little village of Susya, in the occupied West Bank, here’s a report to listen to from back in 2012. Today, Susya’s destruction could come at any moment.